A Letter I'm Sending Back in Time to Myself The Night Before Halloween of 2005

Hey, what’s up? Wait, let me guess. It’s Sunday night so you’re probably in sweats, eating a medium pizza with banana peppers and pineapple and watching a crappy movie on TBS. If I remember correctly it’s The Wedding Planner. Mindy, stop watching that movie. In six months you’re going to tell some cute guy over drinks that The Wedding Planner is one of your favorite movies and that you think JLo is a great actress and you’ll never hear from him again. And stop eating that pizza. You can’t tell yet, but your metabolism is slowing down, a LOT. If you keep eating like this, one Saturday night in 2007 while at the movies you’re going to have to unbutton your jeans to let your muffin top breathe.

ANYWAY, I’m writing to tell you NOT to go out on Halloween tomorrow night.

I know, I know, it’s Halloween. It’s the one night of the year you get to wear fishnets and heels together without judgment. And this year you’re dressing as a ladybug for the forth year in the row because you bought a children’s size, fleece, ladybug dress in the “costume section” of some drugstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2002. And you tell everyone you wear it because “it’s warm, it’s fleece” but I know you wear that lady bug costume every year because you think wearing a children’s size dress as a shirt, with fishnets and boots, will get you a boyfriend. But all it’s gotten you so far is a disturbing conversation with a sixty-year-old man dressed as an exterminator, a free bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream, and an awkward trip to second base with a closeted homosexual.

So don’t wear the ladybug fleece, and don’t go out to a bar on the Upper East Side with a group of girls dressed as “naked chefs” and “naughty lawyers” that’s filled with men in their thirties who still think they’re in a fraternity and are dressed as “athletes” and “women.” And don’t talk to some guy dressed as “a bad cop” but who’s “actually a fireman” all night because you’re turned on by the fact that he “actually fight fires and stuff” and don’t let him and his sports-loving, hairy-dress- wearing friends buy you and your friends four rounds of shots, and don’t say yes when he asks if you want to “split a cab home” and don’t make out with him in the cab. And the next morning, after you ask him why you woke up wrapped in a down comforter, alone, fully clothed, and under a pool table, and he says, “we were playing pool and then you passed out” don’t give him your cell phone number! And when he calls the next day, don’t pick up the phone and make small talk with him for twenty minutes because you’re still turned on by the fact that he’s a fireman. And don’t meet him for drinks that week wearing your “Forever 21 I Don’t Need a Personality Tank Top.”

Mindy, you stupid, naive, little twat. He’s not a fireman. He’s unemployed. He collects knives. And he lives in Staten Island. That night you passed out in his second cousin’s apartment. And when you meet him for drinks he says “So you’re Italian Catholic right?” you when you tell him you’re Jewish he says, “that’s fuckin' hot!” in a really creepy way. And he’s going to call you everyday for the next three weeks leaving you really long voicemails. At first he’ll just ramble and you’ll laugh about it with your friends, but then he’ll get kind of nasty and sociopath-like and you’re going to have to change your cell phone number. And even though you’re sure you didn’t do anything more than make out with him, you’re still going to pay three hundred dollars out of your uninsured pocket to see the Gyno, just in case. And to this day you still have nightmares about being attacked by a large, unemployed, knife collecting, Catholic, fireman wannabe from Staten Island with a fetish for Jewish women who probably reads your College Humor Column. So don’t EVER post a column about him, that would be really, really stupid. Oh, and never wear leggings and jelly shoes when you’re twenty-seven, not even ironically.